William Ashford worked as an officer for the Detroit Police Department since 1995, and as a detective investigating sex crimes beginning in 2015. He found employment with the University of Michigan-Dearborn (UM-D) Police Department in 2017. In February 2019, a university student reported that a professor sexually assaulted her. Deputy Chief Timothy Wiley informed Ashford about the situation. Ashford was never formally assigned to this case, nor had he investigated any other sexual assault cases on the university campus. Ashford asked if the victim was interviewed, and Wiley explained that as a general matter, UM-D police officers did not take statements from victims. Ashford suggested that the professor be interviewed in a controlled environment, and not at his home, as the Department intended. After the professor was interviewed, UM-D police leadership announced that the case was closed, and a warrant was submitted to the prosecutor’s office.
Ashford became suspicious that the Department was not attempting to prosecute this crime in earnest. He spoke with a prosecutor in the sex crimes unit, who told him that the Department had not submitted a warrant package. Ashford complained to Police Chief Gorski that the case was being mishandled and accused at least one supervisor of being involved in a “cover up.” Gorski investigated and told Ashford that the case had been turned over to the Dearborn Police Department, which was waiting on DNA results. This struck Ashford as odd, because he did not think they needed to wait for the DNA results when the professor had already admitted to the sexual contact and other evidence had been collected. Ashford raised his concerns with a Human Resources employee at UM-D and the prosecutor’s office, and through an anonymous letter to the University of Michigan Board of Regents.
Around the same time, an anonymous tipster contacted a journalist at The Detroit News, who submitted a Freedom of Information Act request into details of the investigation. The journalist met with Ashford, who provided information about the case – all of which Ashford later claimed was available to the public. The journalist published an article investigating the anonymous tipster’s claim that UM-D was attempting to cover up a student’s allegation of sexual assault against a professor. The article did not mention Ashford by name or otherwise identify him.
Gorski summoned Ashford to a meeting, where Ashford admitted that he provided information to the newspaper. Ashford became subject to an internal investigation which recommended discipline for “making statements that could be interpreted as intending to have an adverse effect upon department morale, discipline, operation, or perception of the public, and divulging information gained by reason of his position for anything other than its official authorized purpose.” Ashford served a ten-day suspension. He sued the Department and several of his superiors for violating his First Amendment rights for punishing him for his communications with the journalist. The Department argued that the claims against the UM-D officials were barred by sovereign and qualified immunity. The judge denied the motion, finding that UM-D officials were not immune from the suit, and they appealed on this issue.
The Sixth Circuit affirmed the lower court’s ruling. The Court explained that ordinarily “sovereign immunity precludes suits against states and their entities or officers for monetary damages or retrospective relief but permits claims for prospective relief when brought against state officers in their official capacities.” The underlying policy is that private individuals should not be able to seek monetary damages – i.e. taxpayer funds – to remedy the misconduct of government officials acting in their official capacity. In this case, Ashford sought prospective relief from the Department, because he asked the Court to issue an injunction against future retaliation and discrimination, and to expunge the suspension from his employment record. Therefore, there was no risk that the taxpayer would be responsible for paying his damages.
The Sixth Circuit also rejected the Department’s qualified immunity claim. First, the Court determined that Ashford’s speech to the journalist was protected, despite his role as a public employee: “This type of speech, concerning a police department’s apparent mishandling of a sexual assault case, falls squarely within what we have deemed a matter of public concern. Ashford was not speaking in his official capacity as a police officer because (1) his job never involved him discussing cases with the media; (2) he was never formally involved in the investigation; and (3) Ashford’s intended audience was the general public (via the newspaper) and not his supervisors at the Department. Finally, Ashford and the public’s interest in his speech outweighed the Department’s interest in restricting the speech; a possible sexual assault cover up is of pressing public concern, while the Department failed to prove that Ashford’s discussion with the journalist significantly interfered with its operations. Given the Court’s conclusion that Ashford’s speech was protected by the First Amendment, the Department clearly retaliated against him by suspending him for that speech. Such retaliation is not protected by qualified immunity, and thus, the Court affirmed the lower court’s decision to deny summary judgment to the Department.
Ashford v. University of Michigan, No. 22-2057, 2024 WL 94275 (6th Cir.).